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Response limits

OR the fire and rescue service, there have been a number of milestone events in the last decade that have provided both opportunities and challenges, leading to a reshaping of service delivery through the balance of risk and resources. But, with budget cuts across the service and the Government-driven push towards local decision-making, what next for the fire and rescue community in England? There is a host of new issues to consider as services look to make significant savings, increase capacity and improve outcomes. In particular, with services coming under more public scrutiny, it will be essential for fire authorities to have robust, evidencebased processes in place, to analyse the

intervention options and share their findings with the local communities to whom they are accountable.

Service reforms
Following the 2002 independent review of the fire service chaired by Sir George Bain, the Government set out its objectives for the service that included enabling local determination of risk and response options through integrated risk management planning. However, while enabling local democratic and professional freedom, this process created a degree of tension between the fire and rescue service and Government on the issue of national resilience.

In April 2011, the Government, in its response to the Fire Futures strategic review, stated its intention to provide clarity on national and local resilience roles, and to ensure the right structure and funding is there to support it thereby supporting localism, while at the same time securing the necessary resources for major incidents that span county boundaries and threaten national interests or infrastructure. All this has come at a time when fire authorities are having to address their part in the biggest squeeze on public sector spending in years, and is a long way from the position reported by the Audit Commission in 2008 that the fire service could make 200m in efficiency savings by simply adopting good practice.

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With financial cuts likely to drive the future provision of fire and rescue services across England, Paul Woods explores the implications for risk-based response and local interventions

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Issues identified by the Audit Commissions review did, however, include making better use of the retained duty system, and reviewing crewing arrangements where risks are low, citing successive reviews of the fire service that encouraged changes to duty systems and standards of fire cover in the interests of efficiency.

Response variations
The local determination of response standards has led over time, and perhaps inevitably, to a wide range of risk analysis outcomes with a correspondingly wide range of response standards. One fire authority, for example, has established five bands of risk in its area, ranging from very high to very low, with response standards ranging from up to 5 minutes and within 21 minutes. Another authority has established three levels of risk high, medium and low with response standards of 10 and 13 minutes for high risk (for the first and second appliances, respectively) and up to 20 minutes for low risk areas. What are not always made clear within and across individual integrated risk management plans (IRMPs) are the anticipated outcomes to be achieved by such intervention standards, relative to the level of input for example, operational resource deployment and staffing arrangements/levels and the comparative cost. The margin for error in some fire authorities operational performance targets is relatively high, with 20-25% failure rates built into response standards. In its 2011-2014 IRMP, Essex Fire Authority published details of its operational appliance usage, stating that the average utilisation for wholetime appliances responding to incidents is 5.1% and only 2.6% across all duty systems. The same document states that current staff costs are 29.8m per annum.

IRMPs do not always make clear the expected outcomes of intervention, relative to input and cost

This is not intended as a criticism of Essexs resourcing model, but simply to illustrate one of the key issues associated with a service trying to balance risk and response options. What level of provision is required to meet anticipated local operational demands on the basis of meeting reasonable expectations? Equally, what level of latent capacity is required to secure an effective and efficient operational response capability?

Demand expectations
It was Sir George Bains view, in his 2002 independent review, that introducing a risk-based approach would generally lead to a reduction in emergency fire cover where there is little scope to save lives. The premise being that, as call demand falls, so too does the requirement to have the resources on hand to respond to it. That view can be supported in principle to the point at which any given service is still capable of meeting reasonable demand expectations locally, support the Governments national resil-

Is there a point at which the cost of further intervention outweighs the likely outcomes?
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ience requirements, and support its neighbours through mutual-aid arrangements, without compromising its own position. In a public service where demand has peaks and troughs and where predictive demand analysis is a tool to support appliance mobilisation, rather than the determinant of it, there will always be a requirement for over-capacity. The objective is arguably to reduce the gap, without compromising the safety of the public or firefighters. The objective of reducing resources (and cost) as demand wanes, is also more readily acceptable if there is a simultaneous attempt to improve safety by other means, such as improvements in integral safety measures in the built and transport environments, the automatic inclusion of safety education in the school curriculum, and the systematic transfer of responsibility for personal safety from the state to the individual in society. Regardless of the motivation or drivers efficiency, effectiveness or reducing costs all fire services are required to demonstrate how they plan to address risk in the community by the integrated application of prevention, protection and response interventions. An ever-increasing complexity within that planning process is the potential impact of financial constraint on risk reduction endeavours: what standards

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There must be greater transparency in terms of the data used by fire authorities to identify risk and prioritise intervention

can the authority afford to maintain in the future? Equally important in the longer term is the question how safe is safe? Is there a point at which further incremental reductions in fire-related loss are financially unsustainable, with the cost of further intervention outweighing the likely outcomes?

Greater transparency
Another commitment from Government, published in its Fire Futures response in April 2011, is to ensure local decision-making on local services. The Government said that the fire and

rescue service needs to be able to adapt to meet the demands of a continually evolving delivery environment; it needs to respond to the challenges of greater expectations from citizens of public services and to do so with reduced public funding and that in a public spending climate where savings must be made, this will include involving communities in tough decisions on priorities and change in the way things have been done in the past. In order to achieve this, there must be greater openness and transparency in terms of the data and analysis used by fire authorities to identify risk and

prioritise intervention. Without this, there cannot be effective engagement with an informed public. There must also be a means by which that same public can compare and contrast intervention standards and performance in order to provide challenge. Taking the response standards example provided above, how were those standards arrived at, what are the outcomes secured as a result, and at what comparative cost?

Intervention options
While an overall reduction in the loss of life from fire and the number of primary fires in recent years is evidenced by published statistics, a direct link between the actions of the fire and rescue service manifest in IRMPs and those reductions is not always readily identifiable. In the new future envisaged by Government, in which citizens provide challenge and take tough decisions, comprehensive evaluation of intervention options is essential. In addition, has the drive towards community fire safety, and engagement in other activities, such as work with young people, led to a corresponding reduction in the provision of services previously focused on property protection? While in keeping with official Government guidance and morally justifiable, there is still an argument for property-based risk reduction based on social, economic and community impact, some or all of which may have long-term consequences. There may well come a time when those tough

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decisions are taken in terms of funding competing interventions: either/or risk reduction scenarios. costs, it is essential that the assessment of risk and response options inform planning and delivery arrangements, and in turn support optimised response standards. A combination of alternative staffing models, the flexible use of mixed crewing arrangements, new types of appliance and specialist vehicle with smaller crew sizes, and a review of response standards are all means by which savings and/or capacity can be addressed. Reducing reliance on station locations in favour of a more mobile and agile response capability could be key to addressing transient risk. For these opportunities to gain public support, an understanding of how response standards and deployment arrangements impact on risk is essential. Ideally, this should: identify savings that can be realised, without compromising the frontline capability provide quantitative information on the impact of alternative options where it is necessary to reduce frontline capability mitigate risk in any changes that result in reduced frontline capability through alternative measures (by realising prevention outcomes that outweigh the impact of reduced response capability) For example, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service was able to realise 1.4m of annual efficiency gains by addressing the process for managing firefighter abstraction (absenteeism such as leave, training and sickness). This has been achieved without any reduction in fire appliance availability to respond. In addition, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has made changes yielding in excess of 5.5m through a change to its staffing model for low level of activity and risk stations and

Optimised response
A number of challenging reform programmes have been put in place in the aftermath of the opportunities and challenges outlined above. The Government believes that potential savings can still be achieved by means of: flexible staffing arrangements improved absence management sharing chief fire officers and other senior staff voluntary amalgamations between fire authorities If services are going to make significant savings, increase capacity and with it improve outcomes, there will have to be robust processes in place to undertake the analysis and produce the business case for intervention options. Given the fact that a significant proportion of fire authority budgets is committed to operational resourcing and staffing

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FO C U S C u r re n t a ff a i r s
London Fire Brigade

With financial reductions likely to dictate the provision of services in future, it is vital that the most effective use of resources is made to match risk and intervention

the use of a dynamic reserve. The latter ensures that business as usual demand is managed effectively and efficiently, yet retains resilience to deal with local or national levels of exceptional demand. All these changes have been made while improving overall performance against local response standards and mitigating local risks with a demonstrably effective community fire safety programme.

Supporting evidence
Critical to the successes of these organisations was the adoption of an evidencebased approach to complement the professional judgement of senior fire officers. The approach has the following key characteristics: accurate diagnosis that identifies opportunities based upon analysis of current process performance and workload, sourced from operational data accurate prediction of the outcome from implementation of any of these opportunities through the use of predictive modelling software

transparency the ability to clearly show stakeholders why change was required and how the proposed solutions would work As a technique, simulation modelling has been deployed across industry, commerce and service sectors (including the emergency services) for many years. However, recent developments that have been pioneered by Process Evolution, which worked with the two fire services mentioned above, are particularly pertinent in the context of the current challenges faced by the fire and rescue community: the integration of simulation with other techniques, such as value stream analysis (to support the diagnosis), location optimisation and shift pattern design tools (to evaluate alternative rostering solutions) usability despite being a tailored fire and rescue service solution, the simulation model can be configured, and used through a simple interface affordability while an initial study undertaken by independent consultants is often desirable, the full

benefits from configuring the model are realised if it can be used to support the stakeholder consultation between initial support and implementation of the findings and further studies in the future This approach is not all about cuts. The techniques can be used to reduced cost, but at the same time improve the service provided to the public. There remains the real possibility that financial reductions will drive service provision, and it is essential in such circumstances to ensure that the most effective use of resources is made to match risk and intervention. Whatever the driver, in a future world where public scrutiny and challenge increase, it is essential that fire and rescue authorities can provide the information and analysis that inform choice and enable meaningful comparison

Paul Woods is a consultant at Fire and Life Services Limited

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